“How did we get this so wrong?” I ask.
“I should have just asked you out. Back in the beginning.” He’s agitated. “If I wasn’t so fucking cautious, maybe . . . Maybe everything would be different.” His eyes light hopeful. “We could keep in touch. Try long-distance . . .”
My arms circle his neck. “I fall for you and then you leave?” I shake my head.
He looks surprised. “Love? Really?”
I could bat it back: I didn’t say “love,” I said, “fall for.” I don’t. “You’re pretty lovable.”
His mouth drifts closer to mine. I close my eyes. Very faintly over the crashing ocean and the thudding of my heart, I hear, “So are you.”
His lips are warm and taste like apricot. It is familiar and it is strange. At first it’s slow, even a little timid. I keep bumping his glasses until he pulls back and, with a slightly bashful smile, takes them off. Better. We resume our exploration. How do our lips fit together? What do you like? What are you like? We are still sitting side by side on the grassy cliff top, and it reminds me of high school kisses in the shadows around a bonfire: excited and eager and shy and clumsy. More questions than answers. But slowly, Coop and I find our rhythm. Grow more confident. I feel the sinewy strength of his arms. The warm muscles of his chest. The soft play of the curls on the back of his neck. As every second passes, I have a clearer and clearer picture of him. With Elan, kissing felt like combat: a violent need for his lust, his body, his attention. It hits me almost gently: I am kissing Noam Cooper. And goddamn: it feels good.
Something inside of me unlocks, a tentativeness burning away, and in response my body opens. A rush of heat; my desire quickens. I deepen the kiss and he responds, readily, eagerly. We tangle into each other, and now my legs are around him. I pull him on top of me, lowering us to the ground. I laugh and we roll, me on top of him, him on top of me, his weight heavy and delicious. Every kiss more intimate, every touch more assured. His mouth finds my ear and he whispers sweet things into it, words like beautiful, words like perfect. I close my eyes to keep this, this moment, this blissful second, in my memory forever. Because we don’t have forever. He’s leaving.
I’m on top of him as I start to pull back, up, away.
He looks like he’s been hit by a truck. It takes him a long moment to say anything. “Lacey.” He elbows himself up clumsily, fumbling to put his glasses back on. His expression is satisfyingly shell-shocked. “You are . . . wow.”
I snuggle under his arm. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
“No, seriously. You got skills, girl. Mad skills.” He brushes a lock of hair out of my eyes, so gently it reminds me of sunlight. “Are you sure you don’t want to try it? Us, I mean. I have to come back for conferences every now and then.”
“I need someone who won’t leave. And I’ve already had my heart trashed once this year.”
“Who trashed your heart?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Our foreheads touch, fingers spidering together. “Do you remember the day we made pancakes together, you asked me what makes me happy?”
“I do.”
“I’m happy now,” I say. “Even though it’s complicated, I’m happy now.”
“I feel the same way,” he says, his lips touching mine once more.
“Lacey!” My name, a shout on the wind. It’s Luna. Running along the cliff top toward us. “Thank God I found you.” She’s puffing, red-faced. “It’s Steph.”
54.
* * *
We hurry back to the party.
“She passed out in one of the upstairs bedrooms, but when I went back, she was gone,” Luna says. “Viv and I can’t find her anywhere.”
“She’s a bit of a drunk wanderer,” I puff back. “Last New Year’s she went missing for hours. I found her at the dollar-pizza place.”
The house is bordered by cliffs. What if she stumbles, loses her footing? Panic grips me. I shout her name, scan the cliff tops. Nothing. The sound of the party gets louder. The band has started; fun, fizzy dance-pop. The reception is still in full swing.
“Let’s just find her and leave,” I say. I squeeze Cooper’s hand. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” he says. “I’ll check the parking lot and the front of the house.”
We fan out. I edge around the crowded dance floor, searching for a flash of brown skin in a lady tux. Everyone is talking, laughing, shouting over the band. The night is loosening. Little kids race through the adults’ legs, knocking over a potted plant. Someone’s fedora floats in the koi pond, nibbled by fat orange fish. Two teenagers with hollow cheekbones and flops of hair are voguing with the intensity of a drill sergeant. An old man is sleeping peacefully, his cheek resting in a fat slice of white frosted cake.
Of course. I know where Steph is.
The kitchen is no longer the bustling epicenter it was hours ago. Plates of half-eaten appetizers crowd the counter. I could’ve sworn she’d be here, inhaling crab cakes and stuffed mushrooms. Stainless steel pots and pans hang like avant-garde decorations above the kitchen island. His reflection appears in a soup ladle, warped and stretched out.
“Not now,” I groan.
“Lacey,” Elan says, his voice serious and low. “Please. We really need to talk.” He puts a hand on my arm.
I shake it off. “Go away. Before someone sees you.” I glance behind me.
And see that someone already has.
Vivian is in the kitchen entrance.
For one long moment, we all stand there, frozen. We were talking about business, about something to do with the app. But the truth unfurls over Vivian’s face and I know that she knows. My eyes meet Elan’s. At least he can take half the assault that’s about to happen.
Elan puts his hands into his pockets, and takes a step back.
Don’t you fucking dare. Don’t you dare back out of this.
But of course, he does, leaving my business partner and me alone in the kitchen.
Her lips are pressed so tight they’re white. “Before he joined the board of directors, or after?”
Two party guests barrel in, laughing, drunk, diving for the appetizers. I move closer to her, away from them. “Not now.”
“No,” she says, her eyes hard as bullets. “Now.”
I follow her into a laundry room. Two industrial-size washer-dryers sit silently in the darkness, big enough to fit a body in. The air smells like fabric softener and dryer sheets, the scent so fake and cloying it makes me feel sick. This room is distinctly absent of wedding niceties: it’s off the map of this event. We’re in no-man’s-land.
Vivian speaks through gritted teeth. “When?”
“I want you to know, I never meant for any of it to get this far.” I’m speaking quickly, hands raised as if to ward off an attack. “I never meant to lie to you.”
“When,” she asks, “did it start?”
My heart is racing. I’m sweating.
“For fuck’s sake, Lacey, just tell me how long you’ve been fucking Elan Behzadi!”
I work to steady my voice. “March,” I say. “We started sleeping together in March. But it’s over now, it’s been over for months.”
Air drains out of her. She looks at me as if she has no idea who I am.
I babble an explanation, partly timeline, partly excuse: Thought I’d be judged— Never meant to be serious— To save the company— Fell in love.
“Hold up,” she says. “You’re in love with him?”
“I thought I was,” I say. “But now I know that the way he treated me isn’t the way you treat someone you love.”
“How did he— Wait, no, I don’t care. I don’t want to know.” She refocuses on me. “So Elan bailing on Clean Clothes. Is that to do with your relationship?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lacey,” she snaps. “Grow a pair.”
“Okay, yes,” I say. “I don’t know for sure, but yes, probably. But he only got involved because of me, too. I brought him in.”
“You should’ve told me that! That was something I needed to know!” Her body contracts, as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She crumples to her hands and knees.
I rush to her. “Viv!”
She pushes me away. “Last chance,” she says hoarsely, her hands planted on the tiles. “That was our last chance. And you fucked it. You fucked it, and you fucked me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I might cry. “Viv, I’m so sorry.”
Her words are directed at the floor. “You’re rotten, Lacey. You think you’re a good person, but you’re not.”
She’s right.
I’m rotten.
My eyes fill with tears.
Vivian inhales deeply and rises to her feet, refusing to take the hand I offer her. She straightens her dress, smooths her hair, and opens the laundry room door.
“Vivian.” I trail her. “Wait.”
“Why?” She doesn’t stop. “We’re not friends anymore.” She says it like it’s a fact.
* * * *
Everything around me is smoking rubble. My life is a bomb site. It’s only as I approach the clusters of wedding guests outside, all shouting over the band, dancing, drinking, do I realize I cannot be here. I need to leave. Get back to Brooklyn. How?
I spot Luna in the far corner of the patio, surreptitiously trying to get my attention. I hurry over, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. I’m sure my makeup is a sad smeary disaster.
“I found Steph; kept her in one place with a dozen mini quiches,” Luna says. “But we should leave. I have a car.”
“Oh, thank God,” I moan, resisting the urge to collapse in her arms and have her carry me away, action-hero-style.
Luna blinks at me. “Are you ready to go?”
I can’t even answer this question: it’s like asking if I like being alive. YES. “Where is she?”
“Here.” Luna steps back and points. At an empty chair by the door. “Fuck. She was right here.”
I spin around. “She can’t have gone far—”
We both see her at the same time. Walking unsteadily up to the koi pond. Peering inside it. Dangerously close to the edge.
Luna and I start moving for her. We haven’t even covered half the distance when Steph whips her hand to cover her mouth. As if taking a final bow after a particularly well-received performance, she doubles over at the waist and loudly vomits a dozen mini quiches into the koi pool.
Guests shuffle back, their faces a mix of pity, disgust, and amusement. I lock eyes with Eloise, standing six feet away. On seeing me and making the connection that yes, the puking drunk girl is my friend, her expression settles into: Of. Course.
I take Steph’s arm. “Come on, babe. Time to go.”
Steph takes a step, eyes glassy and unsure. Then she pulls away and vomits into the pond again.
“Good God.” It’s Eloise, her voice as cold and crisp as a glacier. “Can someone call security?”
I roll my eyes and shoot her a dirty look. “Come on, Steph . . .”
Steph plops down on the ground. “Just a sec.”
“She can’t stay there.” Eloise steps away from her group, addressing me directly. “You both need to leave.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” I say, wanting her to shut the hell up. Everyone’s staring.
“Now,” Eloise says, even louder. “This is a wedding.”
Steph moans softly and places her cheek on the stone edge of the pond, curling into a ball. It’s such an accidentally insolent move, so directly defying Queen Eloise, I almost laugh. I look right at Eloise, and shrug. “Guess we’re staying here.”
I figure Eloise will roll her eyes and stalk off. But to my surprise, it infuriates her. An ugly anger I’ve never seen in her explodes across her face. She strides toward me so fast I think she’s going to hit me. Her eyes are burning. “You are being incredibly rude.”
I scorch with rage. Everything in me wants to slap her. “Fuck. Off.”
“Lacey, leave,” she snaps. She raises an arm, pointing at the exit. Her voice is shaking. “I strongly suggest you leave.”
“No you leave.” I raise my hands, pretending I’m about to shove her, just to make her flinch. Startled, she takes a full step back. Her heel catches on the edge of the pond. For one amazing second, she wobbles, arms spinning like helicopter blades, before she slowly tips backward and she falls.
A shallow splash. Eloise Cunningham-Bell is on her ass in the koi pond, surrounded by Steph’s floating vomit.
There’s a full second of silence before she unhinges her jaw and screams, a bloodcurdling, glass-shattering scream. A dozen bodies rush to her assistance. My mind is static with shock, the full horror of what just happened beginning to edge into full consciousness. Dumbly, I look back around at the crowd.
Patricia stands alone on the lawn watching me with grim dispassion. Her arms are folded. One eyebrow is hooked all the way up.
Her expression says everything.
I’m done.
55.
* * *
October
New York doesn’t have four seasons. It’s hot, and then, it’s not.
Patricia and I have lunch the first day I underdress for the weather. Her robust Italian tan is offset by a cream silk suit and black pageboy wig, but her usual breeziness is absent. We order salad. No wine. The restaurant is still pumping summer AC. It’s so cold, my teeth chatter.
I’ve been dreading this.
Thanks to her enormous ass, Eloise sustained no real injuries from her fall, apart from the damage to her enormous ego. Naturally, she parlayed a few bruises into a week off work, spent “convalescing” in her parents’ summer home on Cape Cod. I formally apologized via email, phone, and then in person when she returned. Not because I felt she deserved it; I was honestly afraid she’d try to sue me. I was terrified something might turn up online—nasty gossip or worse still, a clip—but nothing did. Behind closed doors, the privileged protect their own.
Patricia and I haven’t spoken one-on-one since the wedding. I can’t get a read on the fallout: Am I getting fired? Or just punished? In my most hopeful moments I wonder if, after the dust has settled, she’ll actually find the whole thing darkly amusing and still give me the job. After all, I didn’t actually push Eloise. It was an accident. Sort of.
We slide into our seats and simultaneously unfold our napkins over our laps, like boxers touching gloves before a fight. “I need to tell you something,” I say, before she can draw breath. “I need to tell you what’s going on with me.”
I explain my diagnosis and the choice I’ve been struggling with all year. I don’t tell her about the list, but I do say that I was motivated to take control of my sexuality, which led to an affair with Elan Behzadi, a situation that clearly got out of my control. I’d assumed that Eloise had told Patricia about Elan, or that she’d guessed from the way he was following a junior employee around all night like a lovesick tomcat. From her nonreaction to this part of my tawdry tale, I know one of these options was correct. When I finish, Patricia ticks her head to the side, thinking. I wait, my leg bouncing restlessly underneath the table.
“It’s your choice who you share a medical diagnosis with,” she says eventually. “But I feel sad you didn’t confide in me. About any of this.”
This is harder to hear than anger. “I didn’t tell that many people.” I fiddle with my silverware. “So, am I fired?”
Another excruciating pause. Then: “No. But I definitely cannot give you the fashion editor position. Not just because of what happened at the wedding. Because of what happened with Elan.”
Disappointment, cold and wet. And then, surprisingly, a scratch of anger.
“What?” she asks, watching me.
“Honestly? You’re punishing me for sex. Which seems archaic and, well, something of a double standard.” I’m not convinced the same thing would be happening if I were a man.
“I’m not punishing you for sex,” Patricia says. “I’m just choosi
ng not to reward you for concealing a conflict of interest from both of your employers: Vivian Chang and myself. Your relationship with someone like Elan is a setup for pain, but what little power you had to do the right thing, you didn’t use it.”
Our salads arrive. I pick at mine. No appetite. “Thank you for not firing me,” I tell Patricia, not quite able to look her in the eye. “I know you have the grounds. I know I let you down.”
“My first husband’s sister died of breast cancer,” she says. “A girlfriend from high school was just diagnosed with ovarian. Until this country can get its act together, I won’t abandon my employees. Even the ones who push pregnant women into koi ponds.” There is almost a glimmer of amusement in her eyes.
I was, and am, grateful. Not only because I still have a job, albeit one I don’t particularly feel passionate about. Because I need it. Seven weeks after that lunch, on the first afternoon the city is dusted with a suggestion of snow, a mammogram identifies ductal carcinoma in situ. “It’s not cancer,” Dr. Williams, my breast surgeon at NY3C, explains to me. “More like precancer. Cells in your ducts are behaving abnormally and we don’t know why.”
With no small sense of déjà vu, I reschedule my surgery for the first week of December. It doesn’t feel scary or celebratory. It feels inevitable.
* * * *
At first, Cooper and I keep in close contact, texting every day and calling on the weekends. But as time goes by, I realize it’s hurting me. I miss him but I have to let him go. He left his furniture when he moved to Berlin, so Steph could sublet a “furnished room,” but the things that made it specifically Cooper—the books, the harmonica, the framed photograph of the 1980s New York subway car—are all gone. It makes me sad to go in there now, lost and a little wistful. I scale back our contact and try to focus on what’s happening here, in New York, right in front of me.
In a tastefully lit shop front on the Lower East Side, I purchase a handful of sex toys. Colorful silicon that buzzes quietly. A few weeks later, I sit next to a cuteish boy at a book launch and take him home. He’s an aspiring stand-up comedian, nervous and grateful. The sex is okay, made better by the vibrating silicon. Afterward we watch SNL clips on YouTube and order takeout from Golden Century. A month later, I meet a punky girl called Kat at a fund-raiser for Planned Parenthood and we end up having pretty good sex in her noisy basement apartment in the East Village. Kat’s a political nerd. As I reach the limb-quivering, teeth gnashing climax of number six on my bucket list, I unexpectedly lock eyes with Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose framed photograph hangs opposite Kat’s bed. When I tell Steph, she laughs so hard she wets herself.
The Bucket List Page 31